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ESA Newsletter December 2000:ESA Newsletter: December 2000ICE 2000The ICE 2000 meeting was completed very successfully. We had a very good attendance, with 3300 registrants from 75 different countries. The 215 oral presentations represented 21 different countries. The meeting progressed very smoothly due to the excellent organisational skills of ICMS Australasia. The scientific content was highly regarded. Various members of the Local Organising Committee and myself have received numerous positive comments on the excellence of the scientific content of the meeting. The availability of lunches in the same area as the poster presentations and the exhibitors' stands led to a very pleasant and congenial atmosphere, while the close outdoor and pleasant setting of Darling Harbour was much appreciated. We are still in the process of finalising all the costs from the meeting. It is anticipated that there will be a small profit returned to the Endocrine Society of Australia. I would personally like to acknowledge the outstanding work of Rob Baxter, David Handelsman, Christine Clarke, Rebecca Mason and Chris Cowell, as well as the invaluable support and efforts of Ray Rodgers and Duncan Topliss throughout this process. I would like to think that, and I am encouraged in this by the comments I have received, it was an outstanding ICE meeting and one that will be hard to beat in the future. John Eisman,
Chair, ICE 2000
For the first time ESA engaged a professional media group to help promote media coverage at ICE 2000. Council considered the request from the local organizing committee for this, and felt there were two strong reasons why we should engage in such an activity. Firstly, it would promote an awareness of endocrinology within the general public, and secondly help support the notion that Australian endocrinology is a strong active research and clinical discipline here in Australia. This is important in the funding stakes. There are many other advantages. Conference Media Australia (CMA) were appointed to run the campaign, and a subcommittee of myself, Rebecca Mason and Chris Cowell was formed and together with CMA identified newsworthy articles for press release, just two per day. We also selected about a third of the stories from Australian researchers - David Torpy, Phil Owens and Ken Ho were chosen. Each chosen person was briefed on their role, they gave their consent and participated in the process. Our committee was on hand during the conference to assist journalists. One interesting comment from the journalists was how difficult the abstracts were to understand. I think this reflects the scientific content of the abstracts compared with other medical conferences. We achieved an extremely high level of quality media coverage. The results in cold hard terms have not been fully docu-mented, as articles are still appearing in GP media like the Australian Doctor and Medical Observer, and will continue to do so into March or later next year. However, as of late November we had 20 television news and current affairs stories, 53 newspaper stories, 62 radio news and talk-back items, and 32 online news stories. A total of 167 separate items of news coverage. A valuable lesson
learned from dealing with the media is that very little happens
by chance. Almost all news appears to be orchestrated by someone,
some-where, who has a vested interest in what we read, watch and
hear. A suggestion and question! Should we do this again at our own meetings? We could defray the cost by including all the endocrine societies that meet with us, and call it National Hormone Week or some such gimmicky thing. It is something for all members and the new ESA Council to consider. I certainly would support it. Can I suggest you feed back your views to Council on this? Remember - it is our Society so have you say. Ray Rodgers <<Table of Contents - ESA Newsletter December 2000
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